Somewhere over the current administration’s path to the White House the principle that lawmakers are elected by Americans to serve all Americans seems to have gotten lost. Many key people who came with President Bush into office were corporate insiders and people with long defense department histories which might have symbolized strength. Once elected, they displayed a callous disregard for what the majority of Americans wanted in favor of their own ambitions.
So, we elected people from another party to turn things around over the course of the last elections and are still waiting for tangible results. Turning things around no doubt will take time, but it will also take a commitment to a shift away from business as usual. Of course Americans don’t want to turn the world upside down. The change we want is to move from the traffic rotary the Bush administration has kept us on, backtrack close to where we got sidetracked and return to being a nation believing fully in its leadership and its place in the world.
We are in need of people who stand up for what their constituents ask for. We don’t need politicians who quickly bow to pressure after having claimed otherwise. If a politician will not carry out the will of the voters and takes advantage of their position they don’t deserve to be reelected. A country of citizens who have become disillusioned with their leadership is never a welcoming prospect.
The last thing any voter wants is to feel they have been bounced from one party to the next with a lack of results. Furthermore we don’t need to be misled by politicians who claim their side is different from the other but end up traveling the same path as the people they replaced while pretending the tour is somehow different now that they are in it. We need people affirming they are willing to solve problems then work for that, leaving gimmicks at the door when they enter.
We pay public officials and like any other arrangement where money is exchanged for services we should expect to get what we have paid for. We need to rethink who we give our money to when the people we are paying attempt to hand us one thing and pass it off as something other than what we expect. At that point a change of scenery and service provider may be wise. We simply must demand more.
The entity paying for those services is a large and powerful group which doesn’t always realize its full power but nonetheless influences the direction of the nation and often the world. I’m speaking of the American voters of which I’m a member. After all none of those officials would sit in seats of power and influence if not for our collective votes and voices.
When our representatives take advantage of us after we’ve entrusted them with a third of every one of our paychecks we must respond with a firm and resounding no! Any entity not funded by corporations or other moneyed interests could not hope in any meaningful way to catch the ears of most politicians. We usually cannot compete with large donors and gain influence that way. Where our voices resound and make them sweat is with those singular votes occurring in tiny metallic square voting booths.
In those moments we speak most loudly. We know which promises made were kept and which were not. If an official has been working on the same problem for more than a term and cannot fix it maybe it’s time to bring in a fresh face with new insight. Large problems can take more time than one term allows and that’s always worth considering.
With all we’ve been through as a nation over the past eight years it’s time to be assertive about what we want. Whether democrat, independent or republican we are at a point in our country’s history where we all deserve better leadership. Corporate raiders and pentagon flunkies have dropped us off at the junk yard, left with the bus fare and laughed on the way out. Our history should now take a turn towards what we want to make it.
Whether the current administration continues baiting Iran into war or we are attacked by terrorists we should never forget who we are and allow anyone else to fool us into war without ample justification. We’ve believed in the potential for a great America our whole lives. We’ve believed in a great America since before our fight for independence. We have done so for ourselves, for the next generation and as an example for the whole world. Let’s try and recapture that spirit this election season.
To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.
